#Geno's painting was an experiment at more detailed backgrounds

[missd476]

I had the urge to try watercolors again. Even if I'm not good at it.

[rayadraws]

Experiences customizing my Obitsu 11

I’m writing this post because from what I’ve seen, there is not a load of information out there on Obitsuroids, at least not that I’ve found and/or in English. I don’t know a lot myself, but I do have a little bit of personal experience now, as well as searching around the web to learn more. In this post, I will give a bit of background and share my experiences customizing my first OB11 body.

My Little Borg is a Genos nendoroid head on an Obitsu 11 (sometimes shortened down to OB11) ball jointed doll (BJD) body. This doll is often used together with Nendoroid heads, creating a hybrid doll referred to as an Obitsuroid. OB11 weren’t specifically created for nendos, so you need to customize the body a bit to fit, but it’s not difficult.

OB11 bodies come in three colours, which are called White, Natural and Black. The White body is usually recommended for nendos, as its skin colour is the closest to most nendos. For Genos, I used the black one, which is a shiny black. It can be a bit harder to find than the others. I purchased mine via a store called Toymalaysia through Etsy, though I have also seen this model on Amazon - but for a higher price. I haven’t been able to find it on eBay, though I have seen the other models on there.

I had seen some people that had painted their OB11 to look more cyborg-y and I wanted to try that as well, so I looked around the web for advice. Most people recommend a sealant called Mr. Super Clear. I purchased the “matt” version, although if you’re doing a cyborg body, you could probably also go with the glossy (in fact, in retrospect, I think it would have looked very nice on Genos’ body!). But if you intend to customize any faces, the matt is recommended as it looks more natural on ���skin”.

I acquired acrylic metallic paints and also used a black Copic marker, as well as a gold and silver Sharpie, and a white Posca pen.

The smart thing to do is to thin your acrylics with water and paint many layers to avoid a rough/uneven surface, which I didn’t do because I learnt about this after the fact (also I am very impatient so no guarantee I would have done it anyway...). But the “texture” doesn’t bother me too much, since I used the acrylics for the metal parts, which might have a bit of “wear and tear” and a rough surface anyway. I used the Sharpies on the edges and small details, which worked very nicely, as I’m less confident with a brush on small details. I likewise used the Copic to clean up uneven edges. Finally I used a white Posca pen (which is a type of liquid paint pen) to draw in Genos’ pale spine.

In the middle of the process - you can see on the feet that I had to use several layers before the paint would cover an area completely

When I was happy with what I had, I sprayed the body with Mr. Super Clear. I might have used too much I think, because it got a little thick in places as it dried (after running down the sides a bit). It was interesting to see just how well it worked - it made the (unpainted) black parts look noticeably less glossy than they had been, while the silver parts are still shiny, though less so than before I applied the sealant.

Unfortunately! I noticed that Mr. Super Clear did not get along with... well, I can’t say for sure if it was the Sharpies or the Copic - or both - but either way I noticed afterwards that the colours had run a bit and now looked more uneven than they did before I sprayed it on, pretty noticeably so. Same with the Posca. It’s not the end of the world - I’ve been using my Sharpies to fix it up again, but it’s something that is worth knowing, especially if you intend to use these type of markers on something more sensitive and/or detailed, like a face plate. I did not know beforehand that this might happen, especially since this sealant is so heavily recommended everywhere. It did not appear to affect the acrylics at all.

All in all it was a fun learning experience and while the result isn’t perfect, it will work for my purposes! I learnt a lot!! And I do have a second black body, so I may one day attempt to customize that one too... maybe to use Genos’ newer body from the manga...

This is what the final result looks like:

If you compare Genos’ neck in this photo with his arm in the top photo above, you can see how much less glossy even the black parts look like after the application of Mr. Super Clear!

And here is what he looks like once fully dressed: